It’s also a telling benefit on a number of levels. The labor market is getting stronger, and employers are needing to think harder about how to invest in recruiting and retaining employees. But the old-fashioned strategy of paying more continues to be something corporate America resists, in part out of habit and in part because offering higher wages is a little more complicated than it looks. Companies like Walmart are, in essence, trying to get creative with their compensation packages in hopes of narrowly targeting the money they expend on the core goal of recruiting and retaining desirable workers.

The question is whether policymakers will keep unemployment low long enough to break through the wall of resistance to across-the-board pay hikes and force big companies to finally just raise pay.

You won’t, in other words, be able to do part-time shifts at Walmart to “pay your way through college” in the traditional sense.

But qualifying Walmart employees (including both full-time and part-time workers who’ve been with the company for 90 days) will get discounted tuition, books, and access to a coach who will help them decide on an appropriate program and shepherd them through the application process

It’s a nice opportunity for Walmart employees to gain a chance at upward mobility off the retail floor, and that’s likely the point. Unlike higher cash wages (which of course can be used for online college tuition as well as rent, gasoline, movie tickets, medical expenses, etc.), the tuition benefit is likely to be disproportionately appealing to people who are on the more ambitious end of the distribution. It’s an effort, in other words, to make Walmart more attractive specifically to the most appealing set of potential workers, a strategy other companies have pursued in recent years.

Many large employers are trying tuition benefits

Modest tuition programs have long been a staple of large employer benefits packages largely because of favorable tax treatment. The IRS allows employers to give employees several thousand dollars’ worth of tuition benefits tax-free, which makes establishing a program something of a no-brainer for most companies big enough to be employing a large back-office staff anyway.

These initiatives differ in detail, but the broad story is the same. The unemployment rate is now low, so recruiting new staff is getting harder. Companies are looking to enhance their compensation but would like to do so in targeted ways.

It’s also a telling benefit on a number of levels. The labor market is getting stronger, and employers are needing to think harder about how to invest in recruiting and retaining employees. But the old-fashioned strategy of paying more continues to be something corporate America resists, in part out of habit and in part because offering higher wages is a little more complicated than it looks. Companies like Walmart are, in essence, trying to get creative with their compensation packages in hopes of narrowly targeting the money they expend on the core goal of recruiting and retaining desirable workers.

The question is whether policymakers will keep unemployment low long enough to break through the wall of resistance to across-the-board pay hikes and force big companies to finally just raise pay.

You won’t, in other words, be able to do part-time shifts at Walmart to “pay your way through college” in the traditional sense.

But qualifying Walmart employees (including both full-time and part-time workers who’ve been with the company for 90 days) will get discounted tuition, books, and access to a coach who will help them decide on an appropriate program and shepherd them through the application process

It’s a nice opportunity for Walmart employees to gain a chance at upward mobility off the retail floor, and that’s likely the point. Unlike higher cash wages (which of course can be used for online college tuition as well as rent, gasoline, movie tickets, medical expenses, etc.), the tuition benefit is likely to be disproportionately appealing to people who are on the more ambitious end of the distribution. It’s an effort, in other words, to make Walmart more attractive specifically to the most appealing set of potential workers, a strategy other companies have pursued in recent years.

Many large employers are trying tuition benefits

Modest tuition programs have long been a staple of large employer benefits packages largely because of favorable tax treatment. The IRS allows employers to give employees several thousand dollars’ worth of tuition benefits tax-free, which makes establishing a program something of a no-brainer for most companies big enough to be employing a large back-office staff anyway.

These initiatives differ in detail, but the broad story is the same. The unemployment rate is now low, so recruiting new staff is getting harder. Companies are looking to enhance their compensation but would like to do so in targeted ways.

Fee-based and free distance education training and education alternatives ---http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm
Many employers will pay all or part of the fees, including Starbucks, Wal-Mart, McDonalds, etc. For example, Starbucks will pay Arizona State University tuition even for part-time employees. McDonalds will pay tuition for onsite as well as online courses.

Question
What are the most important criteria for sustainable online programs?

Bob Jensen's Answer
In my mind the most important criteria are academic standard reputations and sustainability if the Federal government stopped paying tuition for military veterans. Sustainable online programs have reputation things and niches that make them survivors. Most flagship universities (think Wisconsin and Illinois) have online programs these days that are cash cows for the onsite programs and would survive even without Federal money for military veterans. Such flagship online programs are filling a variety of needs and are often taught by the same faculty who teach on campus. Probably the most exciting new things these days are the McDonalds new program for funding employee higher education (onsite or online) and the Purdue takeover of Kaplan University's faltering online programs.

Of course some online programs have non-traditional funding like Western Governors University and programs funded by employers like Walmart, Starbucks, etc.

3.1 Center for Law and Government
3.2 Rawlings School of Divinity
3.3 Technical Studies and Trades
3.4 Zaki Gordon Cinematic Arts Center
3.5 College of Osteopathic Medicine
3.6 School of Business
3.7 School of Aeronautics
3.8 School of Engineering
3.9 School of Music

Arizona State University (commonly referred to as ASU or Arizona State) is a public metropolitan research university on five campuses across the Phoenix metropolitan area, and four regional learning centers throughout Arizona, as well as 150 online programs. The 2018 university ratings by U.S. News & World Report rank ASU No. 1 among the Most Innovative Schools in America for the third year in a row and has ranked ASU No. 115 in National Universities with overall score of 47/100 with 83% of student applications accepted.

ASU is one of the largest public universities by enrollment in the U.S. It had approximately 72,000 students enrolled in fall 2017, including 59,198 undergraduate and 12,630 graduate students.] ASU's charter, approved by the board of regents in 2014, is based on the "New American University" model created by ASU President Michael M. Crow. It defines ASU as "a comprehensive public research university, measured not by whom it excludes, but rather by whom it includes and how they succeed; advancing research and discovery of public value; and assuming fundamental responsibility for the economic, social, cultural and overall health of the communities it serves."

Liberty University, Purdue University, and ASU may well be the models of the future for comprehensive universities.

Jensen Comment
The ABA restricts online courses in many other law schools to 30% of required coursework to take the BAR exam.

The TSCPA Society in Texas requires 30 semester credits of approved upper level accounting courses to sit for the CPA exam, and at least half of half of those credits must be from traditional face-to-face courses on campus. This means that if a student takes a fully online accounting degree from an accredited university that student may have to enroll for 15 credits of face-to-face classes even if the student has previously taken those courses online. Plus a three credit ethics course is required that must be from a face-to-face course. There are also other required non-accounting courses but these can be online courses from accredited colleges ---https://www.accountingedu.org/texas-cpa.html

Interestingly, Bill Cooper was an accounting Ph.D. student at Columbia who encountered great troubles with an advisor at the dissertation stage. It was then that he commenced a new Ph.D. quest in Operations Research (OR) at Carnegie. Bill Cooper ultimately became a world-leading OR researcher, scholar, teacher, and author.

I became rather close with Bill Cooper when we served on the AAA Executive Committee together and corresponded somewhat regularly thereafter. Bill became a towering figure in OR research and application who always had an interest in problems of the real world. Exhibit A is the significant role he played in the breakup of the AT&T monopoly.

Accounting Hall of Famer and very long-time (practitioner) Accounting Review editor (1928-1942) Eric Kohler turned young Cooper's life around and persuaded Bill to return to schooling. Kohler also hired Bill as his accounting assistant and played a huge role in Bill's academic future.

Perhaps it was out of the respect and admiration for the super accounting practitioner (Kohler) that eventually led Bill to devote so much of his own long life to service in the American Accounting Association even though Bill Cooper's renowned reputation was in mathematics, economics, and operations research.

Bill Cooper was not a fan of the way accountics science took over the AAA in the 1970s and drove away the accounting practitioners from the AAA. This also did not please Bill's student Yuji Ijiri even though Yuji's academic contributions to accounting practice are not noteworthy due to his assuming away a lot of the hard stuff in the real world.

Thanks for filling in some of the blanks about your own life Jagdish even though I think I'm more respectful of the importance of also being a super accountant like Eric Kohler who devoted so much of his own life to accounting research and the turning around of Bill Cooper.

Bill was well aware of the limitations of his own mathematical models that could not overcome the classical problem of not being able to overcome unrealistic underlying assumptions about the real world.Bob

PS
Joel Demski's undergraduate was in industrial engineering. I think this was a reason for Joel's long-time fascination with cost accounting and his close working relationship with Chuck Horngren (who was not into mathematics and analytics). Chuck Horngren was the super accountant who inspired Joel Demski much like Eric Kohler was the super accountant who inspired Bill Cooper.

Close relationships with professors or other mentors can make a big difference for students. Having a mentor in college is linked to academic success, and even predicts well-being later in life. At the most basic level, mentorship requires interaction. So small, residential colleges might imagine that their low student-to-faculty ratios and well-trafficked common areas give them an edge in fostering those important relationships.

But research from the Gallup-Purdue Index, which has conducted national polling and examined alumni outcomes for more than 100 colleges, suggests otherwise. Institution type didn’t correlate with the share of recent alumni who strongly agreed they’d had a mentor.

In fact, the college that performed best on this measure was Western Governors University, which enrolls more than 67,000 undergraduates, all of them online. Sixty-nine percent of the university’s recent graduates indicated they’d had a mentor in college — more than double the share of young alumni nationally, according to Gallup polling.

Proponents of mentorship take pains to distinguish it from advising. Mentorship, they say, is relational, while advising is transactional. Still, it’s worth remembering that many colleges wrestle with the best way to provide even transactional support. At some colleges, advising is the work of faculty members; at others, designated professionals. Which approach works best is the subject of continued debate.

Either way, some students never meet with an adviser at all, and many others have only quick, superficial conversations about meeting their degree requirements. And while some colleges dig into student data to intervene proactively when students hit an obstacle, that has yet to become common practice.

Western Governors’ success suggests that mentorship — which Gallup defines as having someone who "encouraged me to pursue my goals and dreams" — can be done at scale.

The offspring of Purdue University’s purchase of Kaplan University has been christened Purdue University Global. In a news release, Purdue said the name would become official if the regional accreditor, the Higher Learning Commission, approves the deal.

That review is scheduled for February 22, according to the news release. The Indiana Commission for Higher Education and the U.S. Department of Education have already signed off on the deal.

“Our campuses are typically named after the physical locations where they hold classes. Purdue University Global can be accessed from anywhere in the world, at any time,” said Purdue's president, Mitch Daniels. “The name proved appealing and meaningful to our various stakeholders – most importantly prospective students.”

The new name omits mention of Kaplan University, which currently serves 29,000 students online and in person in Iowa, Indiana, Nebraska, Maryland, Maine, Missouri, and Wisconsin.

Betty Vandenbosch, president of Kaplan University, would become chancellor of Purdue University Global.

“The name is respectful of Purdue’s exceptional reputation, but also distinct from Purdue’s other campuses,” she said.

Purdue’s decision to buy the for-profit university has stirred debate since news of it broke in April. Faculty members and students questioned the public university’s motives, with one equating the deal to selling the university’s brand to Wall Street. Others have raised concerns that Kaplan would retain control over the institutions it currently has while receiving a facelift from the Purdue brand.

Jensen Comment
Roughly speaking, Purdue University had 30,000 undergraduate and 10,000 graduate students before taking on Kaplan's 29,000 students. This makes the acquisition of Kaplan University a pretty big deal for Purdue and greatly changes its outreach mission. Online universities typically have much lower admission standards than flagship state universities. It will be interesting to see how Purdue maintains traditionally high admission standards and graduation standards. in its new Purdue Global University. My guess is that the 29,000 figure will shrink for degree-seeking graduates, but nobody knows by how much at this juncture.

Many of the PGU students may become non-traditional students seeking technical badges/certificates rather than transcript credits. That may become typical in many of our flagship universities as employers seek greater specialization skills of new employees, often technical skills not being taught in flagship universities at the moment. For example, until now employers would not recruit on flagship university campuses for accountants specialized in cross-currency swap accounting or accountants trained in derivative financial instrument valuations using Bloomberg terminal yield curves. That could change as badges and certificates become increasingly popular.

The offspring of Purdue University’s purchase of Kaplan University has been christened Purdue University Global. In a news release, Purdue said the name would become official if the regional accreditor, the Higher Learning Commission, approves the deal.

That review is scheduled for February 22, according to the news release. The Indiana Commission for Higher Education and the U.S. Department of Education have already signed off on the deal.

“Our campuses are typically named after the physical locations where they hold classes. Purdue University Global can be accessed from anywhere in the world, at any time,” said Purdue's president, Mitch Daniels. “The name proved appealing and meaningful to our various stakeholders – most importantly prospective students.”

The new name omits mention of Kaplan University, which currently serves 29,000 students online and in person in Iowa, Indiana, Nebraska, Maryland, Maine, Missouri, and Wisconsin.

Betty Vandenbosch, president of Kaplan University, would become chancellor of Purdue University Global.

“The name is respectful of Purdue’s exceptional reputation, but also distinct from Purdue’s other campuses,” she said.

Purdue’s decision to buy the for-profit university has stirred debate since news of it broke in April. Faculty members and students questioned the public university’s motives, with one equating the deal to selling the university’s brand to Wall Street. Others have raised concerns that Kaplan would retain control over the institutions it currently has while receiving a facelift from the Purdue brand.

Jensen Comment
Roughly speaking, Purdue University had 30,000 undergraduate and 10,000 graduate students before taking on Kaplan's 29,000 students. This makes the acquisition of Kaplan University a pretty big deal for Purdue and greatly changes its outreach mission. Online universities typically have much lower admission standards than flagship state universities. It will be interesting to see how Purdue maintains traditionally high admission standards and graduation standards. in its new Purdue Global University. My guess is that the 29,000 figure will shrink for degree-seeking graduates, but nobody knows by how much at this juncture.

Many of the PGU students may become non-traditional students seeking technical badges/certificates rather than transcript credits. That may become typical in many of our flagship universities as employers seek greater specialization skills of new employees, often technical skills not being taught in flagship universities at the moment. For example, until now employers would not recruit on flagship university campuses for accountants specialized in cross-currency swap accounting or accountants trained in derivative financial instrument valuations using Bloomberg terminal yield curves. That could change as badges and certificates become increasingly popular.